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Chapter Four: Brickanbreck Receives Visiting Gods
Tera came down to breakfast the next morning to find Uncle Llew already there, taking a second helping from the sideboard. The sideboard itself was practically overflowing: dark rye bread, devilled kidneys, cold chicken, smoked fish, salted pork, oatmeal cakes, bread and jam, radishes on toast, pickled goose, cinnamon pilaf, and more. Tera helped herself to the pilaf and to an apple turnover; the moment she sat down and ate some of the pilaf, she regretted it. It was not that it was bad, exactly, nor was it quite bland, but it was flat, as if it were a distant imitation of the real thing. Uncle Llew had obviously not made it. Tera's heart sank at the thought that she would have to endure several weeks of mediocre breakfasts. And in The City of the Gods, no less. She bit into the turnover. It was serviceable, no more, no less. She ate it, and then grabbed a slice of bread which she buttered and jammed.
"What are we doing today?" she said.
Uncle Llew looked at her with a vaguely baffled expression. "What do we do everyday?"
Tera's heart sank again, and she wondered how low it could end up going. "Surely you're not going to make me study and do exercises again?" she said in a voice that she did not want to be a whine but sounded suspiciously like a whine even to her own ears. "It's the first day. Surely there is more to see!"
Llew's baffled expression became outright astonishment, as if it had never occurred to him that there might be anything at all to see in The City of the Gods.
Easy for him to be uninterested in it, thought Tera; he was born and raised here and no doubt used to it.
"Well," said Llew doubtfully. "It is mostly like anywhere else."
"Then people to meet!"
Uncle Llew seemed even more skeptical of this, as if meeting gods was a tiresome chore better avoided. But he said instead, "Yes, we will have to meet some people. Morning is visiting time here, so we'll even meet some this morning. Before you arrived, we received requests from Bleiz Twelve-Sery and from Rhiannon Fifteen-Mury."
And who was Bleiz Twelve-Sery? Llew seemed at loss at this question, and finally said, "Hmm, well, he is someone I knew well once." Then, after a moment: "I suppose he is your third cousin four, no, five times removed. A consummate ass and busybody, if he hasn't changed any, and Davnan rarely change."
"We will endure it," said Tera with energy. "And this afternoon?"
Llew looked at her a moment, then sighed as if defeated. "Fine," he said. "I have to look around the estate to see what needs to be done, anyway, so might as well be today. The clan was supposed to keep things maintained, but a thousand years is a long time for things not to fall apart, even in The City of the Gods. We can slow change to a crawl, but we cannot stop it."
He rose suddenly, "If we are going to have a day like this, I will have to get some work done before our guests come. I will be in the basement workshops; you can call me up if you need me by means of the mirror in the drawing room." He then grabbed a knife on the sideboard and, using it on a cheesewheel, carved off a truly impressive chunk, then left, cheese and knife and all.
Tera went back up to get ready, then decided that she had made the wrong decision about what to wear, then got ready again. She was inspecting all the equipment in the loom room she had seen the day before when a long, low tone, reverberant like a bell, sounded throughout the house, followed by a voice: Bleiz Twelve-Sery Metal Hand will arrive by Platform in half an hour, as appointed. She finished what was she doing and then made her way down to the welcoming hall. Uncle Llew met her there soon afterward saying, "It is an informal visit, so we will meet him directly in the receiving room. He doesn't deserve any better, anyway."
Bleiz Twelve-Sery Metal Hand was immensely disappointing as a god. He did have some features vaguely like those of Uncle Llew and her mother, with slightly paler skin, but he had rather bulbous eyes that were permanently fixed in an opened-wide state that would ordinarily look like someone boggled with astonishment. Yet he also somehow managed to convey the appearance of someone who was entirely incapable of astonishment, for he had despite his eyes a dull expression on his face. He was also dressed in a rather shabby walking outfit. The walking outfit annoyed Tera somewhat, since the Platform made it possible to go directly from one place to another; he had not actually had to walk much of anywhere at all. She had only walked downstairs and had still made more of an effort. She stopped herself, and mentally waved all of this away. There was no point in complaining about such things, and she was beginning to sound like Uncle Llew.
"Delighted, delighted," Bleiz Twelve-Sery said as they sat down after introductions had been made. But the delight did not apparently translate into interest in Tera, because he immediately turned to Uncle Llew and said, "Llew, you are back."
"It does seem to be that way," said Llew drily.
"You have been gone too long."
"Have I?"
"Yes," said Bleiz decidedly. "You have been utterly unjust to the clan in denying us all the support of your gifts."
Llew's facial expression, which until now had been forbearingly impassive, became icily cold. "Have I?" he said.
Bleiz swiveled around to look at Tera. "Your uncle," he said in an accusing tone, as if it were Tera's fault, "was the greatest mind of the age, and did he put it to good use? He did not. He hid it all away in Mizur." He swiveled back around to Llew without waiting for a response.
Correctly recognizing that although the comment had been physically directed at Tera, it was actually directed at him, Llew said, "I hid nothing. The clan made very clear that I was more trouble to have around than they wanted."
"We did nothing of the sort!"
"My sister and I were exiled from The City of the Gods."
Bleiz snorted derisively. "It was simply a cool-down! It was temporary!"
"It was betrayal," Llew said angrily. "If clan actually mattered to any of you, it would never have happened."
"Haughty Llew is haughty still!" said Bleiz derisively. "You always thought you knew better than anyone else, better than all of us together. All you had to do was make a small sacrifice for the good of the clan!"
"Being stabbed in the back and cast out is not a 'small sacrifice'."
"It was temporary!"
"So you said before," said Llew, through gritted teeth. "And Amaethon said the same. But it was betrayal."
"And that is another thing," said Bleiz, ignoring this entirely. "We have ever since had to endure Amaethon as Captain of The City. You should have been Captain."
This caught Llew off guard, and for the first time in her life, Tera saw Uncle Llew in a state of utterly baffled confusion. He sat back and in perplexity asked, "Why would I want to be Captain?"
"Again, it is all about you," said Bleiz dismissively. "It is not what you want. It is what you owe the clan."
"Owe the clan?" said Llew in something getting very near to a shout, this having pulled him back out of his confusion into his anger. "The clan who failed to protect my parents? The clan who went along with Mael's cover-up until Arianrhod and I forced the issue? The clan who sold us out for peace and the Captaincy? The clan who backed our exile? The clan who demand and demand and never give? Owe the clan? Let the Embiadwei be glad that Arianrhod convinced me to go along with it rather than give the Embiadwei what I actually owed them. And do not think that I do not know your role in it all."
There comes a moment in some conversations in which it becomes clear that someone has for the first time truly heard something that had been said, and this was the point in this conversation for Bleiz. His face went white. It was as if he had been exsanguinated. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, as if trying but failing to get words out. Tera thought, with perhaps a tiny smidge of malice, that he looked like a bulging-eyed fish suddenly finding itself out of water. He took a long, shaky breath.
"Now, now, Llew," he said, in what was presumably his attempt at a reassuring tone of voice. If that was what he was attempting, though, the attempt was ruined by the slight squeek to it. "I always supported you. Always. Always?" The last 'always' seemed less a statement than a plea for agreement.
Perhaps he would have said more, but Llew cut through it. "All of this is pointless. I am not here for myself, but for my niece. If the Embiadwei want to be a clan, let them do so by supporting her."
Bleiz had regained some composure, and spread his hands. "But of course we will support her. She is clan."
"Yes," said Llew drily, "that does seem what people say. It's the execution that I question."
Bleiz opened his mouth to say something in response to this, but the mirror in the receiving room interrupted: Rhiannon Fifteen-Mury Wood River will be arriving by Platform in one-quarter hour, as appointed. This gave Llew the opportunity to say cheerfully, more cheerfully than was entirely warranted by politeness, "We thank you for your visit, Bleiz; it is always good to catch up. No doubt we will see you often. I will walk you out."
As he stood, he bent over to Tera. "Please let the servants know to bring out the small beer and relishes for Rhiannon," he said in a low voice. Then he walked over and stood above Bleiz. Bleiz was quite clearly not happy to be ushered out so quickly, but he rose, nodded at Tera, and walked out with Llew with what Tera presumed was his attempt at being dignified.
Tera went off to start the process of setting up small beer and relishes. When she came back, Uncle Llew had still not come back, so she simply sat and waited until his return, as the servants set up dishes and plates around her.
Llew returned with a harried look on his face.
"That did not go well," remarked Tera.
He shrugged. "Better than could be expected."
"Perhaps you could be less hostile," said Tera.
He looked at her, amused. "Fair enough. But if I were any nicer, they would assume that I was planning something nefarious. And they would probably be right. Haughty Llew must be haughty still."
They were quiet a moment, then Tera said, tentatively, "What role did Bleiz Twelve-Sery play in my mother's exile?"
"Hmm?"
"You said that he played a role."
"Ah," said Llew, and he shrugged. "I do not know. I doubt whether it was central; he is much less important than he thinks. But you notice that he did not deny it."
Rhiannon made a much better impression on Tera than Bleiz had, and in fact, Tera's estimate of her was revised upward. She was far more nicely dressed, with a sapphire-studded necklace above a neat vest over a sort of belted summer dress; she wore a trim hat and soft lace-up boots. She seemed much better suited to these kinds of clothes than to the formal robes Tera in which Tera had previously seen her. When Tera had first met her at the Hall of the Fire Serpent, she had seemed very 'flat and slow', but then Tera had had no references except her mother and uncle, whom Tera had begun to understand were exceptional rather than typical. Having now seen many gods in passing the day before and an unimpressive Bleiz close up that morning, Tera now found Rhiannon quite respectably 'rounded and swift'. Possibilities might not shift around her as madly as they did around Uncle Llew, but she was easily one of the more godlike gods Tera had seen.
"I hope you are settling in well," Rhiannon said to both of them as she filled a small plate with olives and veal-stuffed cabbage leaves.
"Well enough," said Uncle Llew. "The Embiadwei seem to have done well in furnishing the place for us. Beyond that, we have not had time to do much."
"And you, my dear?" she asked Tera.
"So far I am finding it quite exciting to be in The City of the Gods," said Tera.
"Manawydan, Rhys, and I always find it refreshing to return," she replied.
"And how are Manawydan and Rhys?"
"Quite well, thank you. Manawydan is out fishing, and Rhys is currently playing soule with friends near North Landing, which gives me time to do some visiting."
"Soule?" asked Tera.
"It is a ballgame of sorts, popular here," said Rhiannon.
"Something like a ballgame and something like a chaos," said Llew.
"Yes," said Rhiannon, amused. "Did you ever play it?"
"Many times," said Llew. "I once played in a game that stretched all the way from North Landing to First Landing, had over a thousand players, and lasted three days and two nights without a moment's pause."
"I suspect you were quite good at it."
"Not so much," said Llew. "I am too easily bored. But I was very good at taking back the ball."
"I have difficulty imagining you playing a ballgame," said Tera.
"All the boys among the gods play with balls," said Rhiannon, in a tone that suggested that she thought of this as an untreatable disease to be pitied. "Which brings me, before I forget, to one of the purposes of my visit. Rhys will be playing in a game of olam, Wenovar against Muriaki, the day after tomorrow. I was wondering, Tera, if you would be interested in joining us to watch it."
"I take it that 'olam' is another kind of ballgame," said Tera.
"Yes," said Llew. "Played on a court rather than in the fields."
"It is not just another kind of ballgame, really," said Rhiannon. "It is the game. And it is worth seeing."
"Then I would be happy to go," said Tera, "if Uncle Llew can spare me."
"I have no objections," said Llew.
"And I promise we will look after her," said Rhiannon.
"Well," said Llew cheerfully, "I will hold you to that promise."
Rhiannon looked very unsettled by this comment, but she was polite enough to try to hide it behind a long drink of small beer.
Llew continued thoughtfully, as if he had not noticed, although Tera could see very well that he had, and had been amused by it, "And it is good for training, too; so it would be good to have experience with it in the company of someone who has certainly been to an olam game much more recently than I have."
Rhiannon graciously inclined her head at this. "There is a second proposal I would like to make. The day after the game, I am intending to go down to River Market, but I never like to go alone, if I can avoid it, and both Manawydan and Rhys have other plans. Would it be possible for Tera to come with me?" She looked over at Tera. "If you wish to do so, of course."
"I would love to," said Tera.
"I have no objections to that, either," said Uncle Llew.
"I am glad of it," said Rhiannon with a bright smile. She set her plate aside. "If it would not be considered rude to do so, I must take my leave to meet other visiting obligations."
"Of course," said Llew. "Tera and I will walk you to the Platform."
Rhiannon did something with a strange bracelet on her wrist and rose. Llew and Tera rose with her and they walked out together, across the bridge and to the Brickanbreck Platform.
"If it works for you, come out to Bryn Abernant the day after tomorrow, early in the Forenoon Watch, and we'll go down together, see the game, and take lunch. We should be back in the mid-afternoon."
"I look forward to it," said Tera.
"As do I, my dear."
The inside of the Platform was just an open space with a circle in the floor and mirror on the wall. Rhiannon held her bracelet up to the mirror and then stepped into the circle. She waved, and then suddenly she was gone.
to be continued